For the first two years we lived in Saudi Arabia, we worked as teachers at the Saudi Airlines school in Jeddah. As airline employees, we could fly free around the world on almost any airline, depending on empty seats on the plane. We would take open-ended tickets to an airport, without knowing where we were going, and ask the counter agent which flight had empty seats flying anywhere in the world. We were no longer tourists; we were travelers. One hot, humid night in December 2000, at 2 AM, we jumped on a space-available flight to Sri Lanka. We didn’t know what we were going to do or where we were going to stay when we got there. We honestly didn’t even know where “there” was. We didn’t have internet, mobile phones, or even a guidebook. We just crossed our fingers, buckled up, and took off. When we landed, we found out the country was in the middle of a civil war, and we were in cyclone season.
The island of Sri Lanka was controlled by Ancient Kingdoms from 500 BCE to 1500 ACE. From 1505 to 1948, the Portuguese, Dutch, and British successively controlled the island. The island gained its independence from Britain in 1948. It is roughly the size of West Virginia with a population of 22 million. It is predominantly Buddhist, but Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity are also accepted.
The pictures on these pages are from our old website and were optimized for slow dial-up speeds, so they are small and pixelated.
The view from one of our windows at the
Galle Face Hotel in Colombo
Another busy street in the capital
The Buddha
On our way south
An ornate Hindu temple
A dental clinic
A fishing village on the southern shore
of the island
The view from our other window
Buddha facing the White House
Although it was a cheap way to travel, our cow had to stop several times for hay.
A clock tower at the fort
A cloud shrouded tea plantation
A busy market in Columbo
A Dutch fort in Galle
A lone stilt fisherman in Unawatuna